A beautiful sunrise this morning

Run: AWESOME!

Nike Plus Recorded: 6.02 miles, 51:45 minutes, 8:35 min/mile pace

I planned on running just 3 miles this morning, but I ended up running 6. For some reason I just kept going, and it felt GREAT. I usually do my long runs on the weekends, but this weekend I didn't--for whatever reason. Mostly, I just slept...so maybe this 6 miler was what I really needed to jump start my week. Either way, I was able to witness a beautiful sunrise that put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. One of the best things I have found about running is the ability to put my mind at ease and think clearly. Between my blissful thoughts and the colors radiating from the sky, there was no way this would end up being a bad run.

My knees aren't really hurting. I wrapped them up after the run and I'm icing them now (as soon as I got home from work). Hopefully, with all of this TLC, they will give me more miles and still be usable when I'm an old fart.

Next run day: Wednesday

Tips: Blog 1

This is a website I found on why my knees may be hurting-a more common problem in women. Also, it gives a couple easy tips on how to help get rid of it for good. It's worth the read.

http://eightstepstohealth.com/Knee_Pain_Exercises_Especially_for_Women.html

Text:

"Knee Pain Exercises Especially for Women
Need to strengthen knees because of knee pain? Because of their anatomy, women are more likely to have knee pain. However, much of this pain can be relieved with a few simple exercises.

A young lady in a baseball uniform recently came to see me in the emergency room. She had pain in her knees that had been increasing over the last few weeks. It had gotten to the point that she was actually limping. What to do?

A brief exam and a couple of x-rays later and we knew what the problem was. There was inflammation of the joint between the knee cap (patella) and the knee (distal femur).
Many women suffer from the same ailment. The reason is that because of the wider pelvis that women have, the muscles of the thigh tend to pull the knee cap off to the side. The result is that it gets increasingly inflamed and painful.

The pain from this type of problem is normally just in the front of the knee. It will be painful to straighten out your leg when you are sitting. It will be tender on the side of the knee cap.
If you have this problem, the good news is that normally you can completely relieve your pain with a few simple exercises.

The goal of these exercises is to strengthen the mucles of the front of the thigh (quadriceps muscle) that will pull the knee cap straight.

To strenghten the quadriceps, simply lie down on your bed and do straight leg raises. Don't bend the knee. It is already inflamed and you don't need to make that worse. Just repeatedly raise your leg. This will strengthen the quadriceps.

If you get a bit tired from doing this ten times, just keep doing it. But, if you are in pretty good shape already and this does not make you tired at all, it is time to step things up a bit.
When you are ready, the next step is to do the same exercise with weights. To do this just get an old purse and put a can of food in it and repeat the straight leg raises. Pretty easy eh? As you get stronger, gradually increase the weight in the old purse.

During this time, if you can take them, a good anti-inflammatory medications such as Ibuprofen will help get rid of the inflammation and aleviate the pain you are having in your knee.
However, by doing these exercises regularly, you should not need to use the medication for more than a few days."

I put the text in here just in case the link broke. :D

Not dressed for the Weather

Run: Just a nice warm walk today with the dogs and the husband.

Today, we took the normal hike up the mountain. The dogs played in the river along side the gravel road we hiked up. It was a slow pace because it sped up to about summer weather today. Jeans and a tank top proved to be a little hot for the walk. At some points I wish I was swimming around the river with the dogs. I felt the water and it actually felt pretty warm for the season we are in. The water is also run-off from the snow capped mountains...so you would think it would be pretty cold. Anyways...it was a nice stroll. Kept my knees out of trouble and I still got a bit of exercise, which is always the point.

Ride, ride, ride your bike...

Run: Not a run, just an hour long bike ride at moderate intensity

Today was an hour long bike ride, with random intensity bursts throughout. According to webmd.com the less impact excersices i do, the better it is for my knees. So, that's what I did today. I also did quadracep exercises yesterday. Hopefully, I am doing more helping than hurting. I guess we'll see.

New Shoes

Run: 3.75 miles with Molly in tow. Not a bad run, but not a good run either.

Nike Sport Kit recorded my run as follows: 3.76 miles in 33:15 minutes, at a 8:49 pace.

Today I decided to take Molly, our 6 month old pup, out for her first run. I figure it's better to ease her into running with me while she's still somewhat little. Well, she managed to slow me down a little bit since she has yet to grow into her big puppy legs. But, she was a trooper, running 3.75 miles right off the bat like that. She got spooked a few times by cars (and this really creepy old man that I swear tried to hit her or something because she went FLAILING into the road)and bucked right out of her collar. It's pretty dangerous running on streets that are one car-width apart while Italians are flying down the road like they are in F-16s or something. Anyways, I think that this is the last run I will take Molly on until we get to North Dakota. Hopefully we can find a park or something that is big enough to run a few miles on.

I bought a new pair of running shoes a couple of weeks ago online and I got them in today. I just HAD to go try them out. They are a little heavier than my other shoes--but that's just something I'll have to get use to. My old shoes have over 400 miles on them, so I know that this is a good change. (Even though I love my old shoes so much). They survived my first marathon and all of the training that went into it. It's time to retire them.

I read that knee pain can come from weak quadriceps, so I am starting a rigid training plan to get them up to speed. My hamstrings are pretty strong--so I can see how they can compensate over my quads. Anyways...I am going to start lifting 2-3 times a week. It will be hard to accomplish in the middle of a move, but I will try my hardest to maintain the regimin. Well, seeing that this is a pretty boring blog so far, I am going to wrap it up.

Mollyfalls

Run: No run, another walk with Ben and the pups. Instead of the usual trail we went on a trail up the side of a mountain leading towards a timeworn "castle" footprint. Hard to say how long it was, probably around 1-2 miles

This picture is from our walk today. I thought I would share a little bit of the scenery that we spend hiking around over here in Italy. We actually hiked up a new trail today and with all of the rain this past week, we were slipping and sliding all over the side of the mountain. When we finally got up to the "castle" we didn't realize that it was one until it dawned on us that there weren't many of them scattered around the mountainside. It was beautiful, and crazy knowing that it could be centuries old.

Going up the mountain proved to be a long haul. Not only we were sliding all over the place, but we had the dogs under our feet. They seemed to be mocking us as the would run ahead 50 yards or so, look gazingly back at us, then run back towards our direction full speed as if this were all fun and games. Also, there was a bit of wash-out so, the trail literally stopped-became a cliff-then started again. That was pretty interesting to get across. Getting up the mountain was quite the work out. My calves got the brute of it all and my knees held up extremely well, considering the circumstances. Even on the way down, they felt pretty good. I imagine it helps that this hike was mostly on a mossy, leafy, muddy trail. Easy terrain for the legs, compared to concrete. All in all, I'd say the endorphines gained from this adventure are just about equal to the ones I get from one of my 5Ks :)

Springtime Stroll

Run: No run, just a two mile walk.

Instead of running yesterday, Ben and I took the dogs (the black one is Kegan and the brown one is Molly) out for a stroll in the mountains by our house. It will be one of our last since we are moving out in the next couple of weeks. My knees are still hurting so I am in the midst of cooling off the running to heal them up. Sitting for long periods of time irritates them. Running irritates them. And crossing my legs irritates them. I am 0 for 0 when it comes to being comfortable. I ice, elevate, and wrap them in hopes that they will get better, but nothing yet. Oh, I also take an anti-inflammatory every once in a while- Vitamin M, aka Motrine. Anyways, the husband and I are about to get walking again, so I should wrap this up.